NASA and Axiom Space have partnered again for a private crew mission to the International Space Station (ISS). The Axiom Mission 5 or Ax-5 is scheduled to launch no earlier than January 2027 from NASA‘s Kennedy Space Center atop SpaceX‘s Falcon 9 rocket. According to Axiom, the crew will spend up to 14 days aboard the station conducting experiments similar to previous missions.
It’s an honor to be entrusted by @NASA to conduct our fifth commercial human spaceflight mission onboard the @Space_Station. Axiom Space has sent 14 astronauts, representing 11 nations to the station in the past 4 years, with crews conducting 160+ research and 100+ outreach…
— Axiom Space (@Axiom_Space) January 30, 2026
“We are honored NASA awarded Axiom Space its fifth human spaceflight mission,” Dr. Jonathan Cirtain, Axiom Space President and CEO said in a statement. “All four previous missions have expanded the global community of space explorers, diversifying scientific investigations in microgravity, and providing significant insight that is benefitting the development of our next-generation space station, Axiom Station.”
Ax-5 will be built around the four highly successful Axiom missions which has sent 14 humans, including private and government astronauts, to the orbital lab since April 2022.
Its most recent mission – Axiom-4 – launched on June 25, 2025, and notched several historic firsts. Astronauts from India (Shubhanshu Shukla), Poland (Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski) and Hungary (Tibor Kapu) flew to space for the first time in over 40 years and became the first from their country to visit the space station.
Records set during private Axiom missions
Several other records were set on previous missions starting Axiom mission 1 launched on April 8, 2022. Crew member Eytan Stibbe became the first Israeli astronaut on the ISS whereas commander Michael López-Alegría became the first person to command both a NASA and a commercial crew mission. Ax-1 also was the world’s first all-private human spaceflight mission involving no government astronauts.
Ax-2 was historic in its own right as the crew had the first woman astronaut from Saudi Arabia (Rayyanah Barnawi) and retired NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson, who became the first woman to command a private spaceflight. It was followed by Ax-3 in January 2024 which scripted history with the first all-European commercial mission with astronauts from Italy, Türkiye, and Sweden.
Axiom Space says that all these missions have together conducted more than 160 science and research activities, and over 100 outreach and media engagements in space. The research areas have spanned from diabetes and cancer to monitoring astronaut health and bacterial growth. Out of all four, Ax-4 carried the most experiments and research projects at 60 representing 31 countries. They were primarily focused on biomedical science, advanced materials, neuroscience, agriculture and space technology.
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